2 Libraries Greater than 1

"2 Libraries Greater than 1". That holds true for both, features and time required.

Continuing from the previous blog's theme, "Mo Money, Mo Problems", I wish I had some money. At least that would compensate for the some of the time spent on this version instead of enjoying the weekend. The new features just don't quite seem worth it. Haha....haha... heh... heh... too bad I'm serious.

At least we were able to accomplish all the tasks. Of course, test cases could always be improved. We also didn't get time to discuss as a group the reviews we received. Oh well, there's always this week.

Problems We Faced:

Our plan was to create a BorrowedItem object for each book and throw everything into a list. With everything in one list, it would be easy to sort. Initially I passed the list into a method, sorted it, and then returned it. But my partner, John, mentioned a better way of overriding BorrowedItem's compareTo and sorting the list with the Collections.sort method. Other than that, everything was pretty simple.

How We Worked (and How I Wish Zippy's had Wifi):

We stuck to our previous method and continued to have face-to-face meetings. Unfortunately, we weren't as free as last time and we were only able to meet twice for an hour each at Hamilton library. Communication was not as strong due to it, but we still managed to get the tasks done. We discussed things over AIM on some of the days we didn't meet face-to-face. Hopefully with all midterms done (and some of my partner's projects from other courses), we can get back to efficiently working on a daily basis.

Maybe by some miracle, Zippy's will have free WiFi soon. I mean that would be sweet to scarf down a $5.50 Spaghetti and Fried Chicken plate lunch (hell of a deal) and do some ICS. Now, that's some extra incentive to go face-to-face meetings!

1.1 greater than 1.0

Version 1.1 was definitely more challenging than Version 1.0. More factors had to be considered such as how are we going to retrieve and sort things from multiple libraries and how to filter out results up until a certain date. Version 1 did not need to consider any of this and only print out results.

What I Learned:

Continuous integration can be great. It can help automatically check the project's status as soon as anyone commits. We would know without updating the project locally. But it also has a tendency to be wrong.

It had me more worried about our system. Maybe because shortly after my first commit after adding the project to Hudson, it failed! Weird that it passed locally. I initially had my date printed using Calendar.SHORT where instead of numeric months, it prints out the actual text (e.g. Jan). But Hudson couldn't recognize it. Strange. Anyways, I reverted back all was fine. Sunny day in Hudson.

I really think we should layout a plan early on for the next version. Regardless of how the other's schedule is, we know what the approach is and therefore, we can easily understand one another's approach. Before we thought of storing all items into a list, there was some complicated approach that just seemed more than it needed to be. So yes, draw up a blueprint early on. So we're all on the same page.